What Are Soft Skills? (And Why Do You Need Them?)

Chances are, you've heard the term "soft skills" before, but what are soft skills, exactly? Soft skills are non-technical abilities that are essential for success in any field. They include things like communication, problem-solving, time management, and more. Don't worry, we'll cover those in detail later on in this article.

Employers have always been looking for candidates with strong soft skills. But in today's remote job market, that couldn't be more true. In fact, 93% of employers want to see soft skills clearly listed on your resume these days because soft skills are essential for both individual and team success.

If you want to get ahead in your career, it's important to make sure that you strengthen, practice, and refine them. Below, we'll answer the burning question what are soft skills” and show you why they're so important in the current job market and to your Career Success.

What Are Soft Skills?

It can be hard to know how to define soft skills as they aren't concrete like hard skills. Measuring success or growth in a soft skill can be more nebulous. Let's use social media growth as an example. We can see that using SEO-optimized language will lead to a greater number of impressions. That's considered a hard skill.

When we're dealing with soft skills, this is a lot trickier to measure. For example, communication skills. How do you measure how effective you were when speaking in a zoom meeting? You can't plot client satisfaction with your verbiage on a graph. It's not as cut and dry.

Soft skills can be synonymous with personal attributes. They're the qualities that allow you to interact with others. Examples of soft skills include communication, teamwork, problem-solving, adaptability, and time management.

Soft skills are often considered to be "non-technical" skills. But they are actually becoming more important in many technical fields. As our needs change, engineers and developers must be able to design complex systems. But also they must be able to communicate their designs to their team. Another example? Project managers must not only be experts in their field, but also reliable leaders that can communicate effectively with various teams and departments.

Why Do Employers Care About Soft Skills?

Employers want to know that you have the ability to not only do your job well, but also play well with others. No one wants to work with someone who is difficult to work with.

Soft skills directly impact your ability to perform your job. Strong communication skills will help you convey ideas to your team. Good time management skills will help you prioritize your tasks. To make sure that you are able to meet deadlines, you need to be adaptable. And so on. They form the foundation of a competent employee in an employer's eyes.

5 Important Soft Skills For Any Workplace

What are soft skills if not life skills? While most hard skills aren't flexible, soft skills are VERY easy to transfer. No matter the context, any of these soft skills will come in handy. This is not solely per industry or per rank either. You should leverage your soft skills at every opportunity, whether requested or not.

It can be easy to want to prove your cold, hard knowledge of an industry. But what makes you valuable is your unique approach to any of the below skills. Play the personality card before the brain card.

Communication

What good is it to be a genius if you can't communicate your ideas? Whether you're delivering a presentation or sending a personalized video to a prospect, you have to be clear. And good communication skills actually don't have much to do with language at all.

Only 7% of the way we communicate is verbal. 38% is tone and inflection, and a whopping 55% is body language. All this to say, in an increasingly remote workforce, we need to work even harder to make sure we're properly understood.

Problem-Solving

Being able to think on your feet is a valuable skill in any workplace. Employers want to know that you're not the type of person who gives up when things get tough. Show them that you're resilient and resourceful. They'll be more likely to give you advancement opportunities.

Problem-solving may feel like a skill that you can only display on a case-by-case basis. But that's not true at all! There are many ways to show your problem-solving skills, even in an interview setting. Take time to reflect on YOUR process. Use specific examples and share a time when you untangled a knot that was affecting your team. Storytelling can be incredibly effective when demonstrating any soft skill to potential employers.

Time Management

No matter what industry you're in, time management is a critical skill. After all, there's only so much time in a day! If you can't manage your time, chances are that you'll never reach your full potential at work. Setting priorities and sticking to deadlines is essential for any successful career.

Work backward. Often the best way to meet deadlines is to set a goal and block off time in your work day to meet it. Each task that a company assigns you will have more than one step to it. It's up to YOU to learn what workflow will complete every component of that task. How you go about that is up to you!

Teamwork

In today's workplace, it's more important than ever to be able to work well with others. More and more businesses rely on team collaboration to get things done. Employers want to know that you're not going to ignore the help of those around you and try and work alone. If you can prove you're a team player who can compromise and cooperate, they'll likely give you opportunities for growth.

Simply put, it's much harder to justify promoting someone who keeps to themselves. If everyone on your team loves working with you, then they'll be rooting for you. If you're always to yourself, and can't "show your work" so to speak, all your hard work might go unnoticed. That, and good leadership always uplifts others. So be a team player both for your own good and the greater good of the team!

Flexibility and Adaptability

The ability to change course on a dime is critical. With technology changing, employers need people who are willing to learn new things. This is not industry-specific either. If you can show that you're flexible, you're also building trust.

There is something to be said about saying "no" and striking up a healthy work/life balance. But, especially in a new position, adaptability can be a major asset. Show that you're down for anything, and use every opportunity you can to learn. This eagerness for growth can be the reason they promote you in the future. Or the reason you get the job, to begin with.

How can you level up your soft skills with Uvaro?

As you can see, there are many reasons why employers value soft skills. What are soft skills if they’re not meant to connect you to others? If you want to work on your soft skills, now is the time to start. The good news is anyone can start practicing their soft skills on their own! Many hard skills must be learned in a formal training setting. But you can build your set of soft skills anywhere!

If you feel like you need some guidance in your soft skill development to help enable a career change, learn about becoming a Uvaro member today. You'll find plenty of courses and workshops available to aid your soft skill development in a group setting or book some time with one of our career coaches to get some individual pointers. There are SO many options to help you build these key skills. A quick browse through our Career Success Catalog shows you endless possibilities.

So put yourself out there today!